The AI boom in San Francisco is driving up the cost of living to the point where even high-earning tech workers are struggling to find affordable housing. According to the New York Times, a recruiter earning $180,000 a year and her partner, a software engineer making $185,000, spent three months searching for an apartment under $5,000 a month without success. The engineer eventually moved to Lake Tahoe, where she now lives with roommates for $1,650. This trend reflects a broader shift in the city’s housing market, where the concentration of wealth from potential IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic, each valued at close to a trillion dollars, is exacerbating the affordability crisis. Average rent in the city already sits at $3,827, and the median home price has hit $1.7 million. Vacancy rates in hot neighborhoods like the Marina District and Pacific Heights have dropped from 13 percent in 2020 to about 3 percent. Venture capitalist Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures recently described a new AI elite of roughly 10,000 people worth more than $20 million each. OpenAI alone reportedly created 75 multimillionaires last fall, each receiving around $30 million.
Source: thedecoder
